Konami‘s “Akumajō Dracula” was first released in 1986 for the MSX2. It helped set the template for a series that is still going (relatively) strong to this day – the Castlevania series.
This MSX game was also the first game in the Castlevania series to be given an English language release, and it was released in 1987 in Europe under the title of “Vampire Killer“, which then changed to “Castlevania” when the North American NES version of this game was released on cartridge.
Venture is a conversion of Exidy‘s 1981 arcade game of the same name, and was a launch title on the ColecoVision in 1982.
***CANNED GAME***
The NES version of The Adventures of Dr. Franken was developed by Cygnus in 1993 and was cancelled before release. A prototype exists online, though, which is what these grabs are from.
Dr. Franken II is the sequel to the Game Boy platform game, Dr. Franken, and is once again a satirical take on Mary Shelley‘s classic horror story, Frankenstein. It was developed by Motivetime and published by Elite Systems in 1993 (some sources online say “1997”, but that doesn’t seem to be right; it doesn’t make sense that a sequel would be released five years after the original game, on a time-limited handheld console).
For some reason I prefer the Atari ST version of Zeppelin Games‘ Frankenstein over the Amiga version of this game, mostly because the sound effects aren’t as bad in the ST version as they are in the Amiga version…
Developed by Motivetime and published by KEMCO in 1992, Dr. Franken is a platform game based loosely on Mary Shelley‘s classic horror story, Frankenstein, but delivered in a satirical, humorous manner.
The Amstrad CPC version of Ariolasoft‘s Bride of Frankenstein could be the best version of this game available for 8-bit home computers (although that’s really not saying much). It looks slightly better than the C64 and Spectrum versions, and it’s also got fairly responsive controls, so is somewhat playable.
I’m not sure if the Commodore 64 version of this obscure 8-bit game was the target platform, or if it was the Spectrum version, but all versions of Bride of Frankenstein that I’ve played so far have been pretty awful.
Bride of Frankenstein is a cartoon action adventure game, based on Mary’s Shelley‘s classic Frankenstein story, written by Paul Smith and Steve Howard of Timedata Ltd. and published by Ariolasoft in 1987. And it is absolute rubbish. Yes: Bride of Frankenstein is a malformed, badly-designed abomination that is barely worth a mention here.
The King of Grabs 